Faith
by Reaper Nanashi
Summary: -FF4/2, Oneshot- Kain Highwind was what most people might have identified as a loner—someone who avoided others. The elder, when he stepped through the open door onto the terrace and saw the tall dragoon standing nearby on the waist-high wall, decided the observation was not strictly true. -Sort-of companion to Freida Right's "Rosa's Sins"-


**Author's Notes:** **Credit to Freida Right** for the gently amusing and thought-inspiring _**Rosa's Sins**_. This is based loosely on that (see "The Reasoning Behind It" below for details). You don't have to have read _Rosa's Sins_ to understand this, but it won't hurt. So go read it.

**Title:** _Faith (Kain's Sins)_

**Author:** Reaper Nanashi (Lady Shinigami)

**Pairing(s):** None

**Word Count:** 1,669

**Rating:** K+ (fruit-throwing, head-smacking)

**Spoilers:** Nothing overt, for any late-coming _Dissidia_ players, and nothing at all considering the age of FF4/2.

**Date Submitted:** 2/10/13

**Claimer/Disclaimer:** Squeenix. Freida Right. I just play in the sandbox.

**The Reasoning Behind It:** In _Rosa's Sins_, Mysidia's Elder asks if Kain will be by to confess. Rosa responds by saying that Kain will probably never do so. I found this so true I went to Freida's profile to look for the Kain-centric companion piece that HAD to be there. It wasn't. I fixed that, only it's in my profile. :D

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_A real friend is someone who walks in when the rest of the world walks out._

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Kain Highwind was what most people might have identified as a loner—someone who avoided others. He spent much of his time apart from everyone else, giving the impression that even as he leaned against a wall in one room he was perhaps standing a thousand miles away in another, also. The elder, when he stepped through the open door onto the terrace and saw the tall dragoon standing nearby on the waist-high wall, decided the observation was not strictly true.

He had, in fact, seen Kain's sort in many of Mysidia's magi—thinkers whose low-key energy was easily overwhelmed by the boisterousness of loud friends and crowds and drove them to retreat to a location that offered less sensory stimulation. The refrain, whenever the behavior was questioned, had always been, _"I just needed a bit of space, Elder. That's all." _In Kain's case, the elder found it telling that he had left everyone to be in the dark and quiet of the terrace, but had not closed the door in an effort to hide or cut himself off from humanity. Whether or not he had found it open he had left it that way, so that the voices inside were distant and easy to ignore, yet if he chose to he could tilt his head just a little bit, hear them, and know someone was there.

He might have wanted to be alone, but he did not want to be isolated.

"Elder," Kain offered by way of greeting, without looking at him.

"Sir Kain," the elder answered serenely, unoffended. He was curious about the dragoon, of whom he had heard much but knew little, so he said, "Miss Farrell seemed certain you would not seek confession."

"She knows me very well," Kain acknowledged.

"Is there someone else you might wish to speak to?" the elder offered. He did not think so much of himself that he did not understand that the most important part of a confession was to give the heart of the sinner the proper succor, which could easily come from anyone the sinner trusted to speak truthfully and wisely.

"No." The dragoon's tone, however, suggested the statement would have been more complete if "one still alive" had been tacked to the end.

"You would go to the moon"—possibly to death, though it was not necessary to mention that since it was already so apparent—"with a heavy heart?"

Kain finally looked at him. Or at least turned to him; it was hard to see exactly where he was looking with his helm hiding his eyes. "And, Elder? Would confessing all my sins, to you or anyone else, lighten my heart so that I could die in peace?"

Only if the sinner thought so, the elder had to concede. "Is that why you do not seek confession?"

Kain turned away again. "No human being, not even Rosa or Cecil, can grant me absolution for everything I've done."

"Then you are happier not sharing your burden."

Kain shifted his weight from one leg to the other. "Happiness has little to do with it. My confession will not do anyone a favor, least of all me. It is as simple as that. I will not waste my breath or another's time trying to find consolation for something I allowed to happen in the first place."

"You are so certain you allowed it?" Kain did not answer other than to tilt his head back and look up at the stars, so the elder moved on. "What if another's time is freely given?"

"That makes it no less a waste of my breath. Similar to this conversation. Good evening, Elder."

With that, Kain pivoted on the ball of one foot, looked to the top of the prayer dais for just a moment, and leaped straight up. He landed lightly atop the dais spire, a narrow area of stone, and looked again at the stars, his back to the older man. It had definitely not been his intention to show off, but the elder was impressed despite that. He had heard about the way dragoons jumped but had never seen it before himself, and he was briefly sorry that he had thought so little of the ability that he had not made an effort to witness it sooner.

"Kain?" a voice called from inside. The elder turned to the door as Cecil appeared, a half-eaten apple in hand, and the young paladin dipped his head and shoulders politely. He had recently confessed, not too long after Rosa had, but unfortunately the effort had not served him as well as the others' had served them. Though, to be sure, in the elder's opinion the things that weighed on his mind were of somewhat more grave and worldly concern and not easily put aside merely by sharing it with another. There was no more to be done for it, however; if confession was of little comfort to a man, any further reassurance would be of no more use. "Good evening, Elder. Have you seen Kain, perchance?"

The elder pointed.

Cecil stepped out to join him and turned his gaze in the correct direction. "Might you have spoken to him? Said something that could have distressed him?"

The elder tilted his head, surprised at the swordsman's accuracy. "Beg pardon?"

"When he's troubled, he goes up," Cecil explained, a bit sadly. "Always up. As high as he can. That way, he will eventually get to a point where no one else can reach him."

The elder grasped the symbolism of that immediately. "I see. Then I must apologize."

Cecil shook his head and said softly, "He's afraid to speak of his faults. He expects too much of himself, so that when he fails he can't help but feel humiliated. He has never said as much, but . . . his father was hard on him, and I fear this has a link to that. One day, perhaps, Rosa and I will be able to draw him out. In the meantime . . ."

He sighed and took a bite of the apple he had been holding, chewed, then stopped and looked at the fruit. He swallowed the bite he had taken, took another, then carefully aimed the apple and pitched it as hard as he could. It hit Kain squarely in the side of his helmed head and exploded into bits. Kain jerked, startled, but otherwise offered no reaction to the attack. He certainly did not fall from his small perch, as the elder had worried he would.

"Kain, come down from there!" Cecil called up to him. "The evening meal is ready!"

"No, thank you," was the dry response. "I believe I'll pass on loud, obnoxious socialization and simply eat these fragments of fruit which so mysteriously found their way to this height."

Cecil had apparently been ready for that, because he countered with, "But we're having short loin!" It was seemingly a favorite of the dragoon's, because the young paladin let that statement hang a moment, clearly allowing his friend the opportunity to think about it thoroughly, then added, "Oh, and Rosa said to tell you that she was able to make that special garlic sauce she always mixed for us before!"

That did it, although it would have been impossible to tell had the elder not been _looking_ for a response. Kain's head cocked ever so slightly, but he waited briefly to give the impression that the choice had not been made so easily. A glance over proved that Cecil believed that no more than the elder did, but neither said anything. After all, the goal was to get Kain to join them, not drive him off by pointing out how obvious he was being to those who bothered to see it.

Finally, Kain turned and hopped down to the terrace with them, then headed indoors without another word. The elder watched Cecil give chase and grab his helm, tipping it over the dragoon's face and off his head, and held it in one hand as he reached up with the other and made a mess of Kain's long hair. Kain stopped short, looked over at Cecil, hesitated long enough that the elder realized he was debating the potential reception of his next move, then reached out and smacked the paladin in the side of the head, snatched his helm back, combed the long fingers of one hand through platinum-blond locks to get them to behave for the duration of the meal, and replaced the helm with a touch of ceremony.

"I imagine the number of times I've warned you to not touch my hair has slipped your mind."

The smack must have sounded worse than it felt, because Cecil only laughed as he straightened. "That I fail to heed your warnings says nothing about the quality of my memory." Having said that, he unashamedly grabbed Kain's hair in his left hand—an act which Kain did not respond to, despite his words—and lifted it so he could hook his right arm around the back of the dragoon's neck. He then dropped his friend's hair over his arm, thus protecting the delicate pale strands from being pinched and pulled between them.

"You needn't touch the rest of me, either."

"Perhaps I needn't, but you'll be hard-pressed to put a stop to it," Cecil informed him.

With that, the two young men continued along the hall together, leaving the elder on the terrace to follow in his own time. Which was fine, for it allowed him to see that despite Kain's seeming disdain for human contact, he had made no attempt to move out from under Cecil's arm or otherwise put distance between them. Even if he did not want to confess to anyone, Kain nevertheless wanted—wanted terribly—to be forgiven for his sins. And it may have been true that no human being could give the dragoon absolution, but that little detail was clearly not going to stop the people who loved him from trying.

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**Finis**

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**Answers To Questions You Didn't Even Know You Wanted To Ask:**

**He … carefully aimed the apple and pitched it as hard as he could.**

I disdain the idea that Cecil is . . . I don't know . . . a saint or something. It seems like I'm almost always reading fics where he's presented as being eternally patient and good and never thinking dirty thoughts or is never, in general, actually a mortal man. And okay, he **is** obviously an introvert and his trial to become a paladin revolved around putting aside his sword and concepts like revenge and justice in favor of nonviolence (after which he promptly takes up a sword and goes out to acquire revenge and mete out justice using a standard form of violence), but that doesn't make him any weirder than being half-alien. Because look, of all things, Ceodore had to come from **somewhere**, right? And I **really** doubt Cecil reproduces through binary fission and uses Rosa as a convenient smokescreen. So he can't be **that** perfect.

So if nothing else, I subscribe to the reality that Cecil is a normal guy who has qualities that make him a paladin, but he is in no way defined by those qualities alone. Further, I have found myself to be a firm believer in the Cecil/Kain bromance, and while I don't have any brothers I'm stuck between two sisters, so I like to think I can imagine the kind of sadism (foster) siblings might inflict on each other.

—

Reviews are appreciated incessantly. Thank you in advance.

~RN (LS)


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